Search This Blog

Daily Devotion - Tuesday, April 19, 2016

This week the daily devotions will be coming in a little later than usual! I am attending a preaching workshop in Colorado for continuing education, and am two hours behind my EST time zone! I drank hotel room coffee today. I woke up too early for the freshly brewed coffee in the hotel lobby, so I had to resort to making it myself in the tiny coffee maker in my room. It wasn't as terrible as I suspected, though. It was worse. To begin with, it was weak--so weak, in fact, that I could see to the bottom of my cup. For those of you non-coffee drinking types, when your coffee cup is full, and you can see to the bottom of it, it's not good. Further, it tasted like the coffee had been sitting in a warehouse since the mid-1950's. I have to say that my hotel room coffee this morning ranks up there with some of the worst cups of coffee I've ever had--including a pretty terrible cup of airplane coffee on a German airline once. It's like the hotel isn't even trying. They have to know that the coffee they are serving in their rooms is not only substandard, it's basically a crime against humanity. And it doesn't have to be that way. I have stayed in hotels where the coffee you could brew in your room was as good or better than the coffee they brewed in the lobby. The fact of the matter is, this hotel chain made a choice to serve horrible coffee and then try to pass it off as an "amenity." That's how it was listed on the description of my room, anyway. An amenity. I have come to understand that the culture within which we live, works that way when it comes to it's promises of a full and happy life. The culture around us promises a great deal only if you sign on to a few unspoken propositions... First, you'll have to buy whatever our culture is selling. Second, even though you, and everyone around you might know that whatever it's selling is garbage, you'll talk about it as though it's the greatest thing you've ever experienced. Third, you'll have to seriously lower your expectations, or else you'll spend your whole life being disappointed. The Resurrection life doesn't work that way. When you embrace a life following the risen Jesus, the promises that you are given aren't barely propped facades--they are the real thing. Promises of joy, eternal life now and forever, hope and peace... these are the amenities of living a Resurrection life. The culture around you can't even come close. Jesus told his disciples once: 27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. - John 14:27You don't have to spend your life drinking hotel room coffee and trying to imagine that it's something that it isn't. Jesus was raised to new life in order to raise you and me and all of Creation with him. It's time wake up and smell the really good coffee, brothers and sisters! May you choose to embrace a Resurrection life today, and refuse to settle for the false promises of the culture around you. May you decide today to live a full, abundant, purposeful, hopeful and peace-filled life, free from fear, free from false security and from all the ways the world would drag you down. And may the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you now and always. Amen.

Popular posts from this blog

It's also one of those Sundays when you can't ignore the church calendar and just preach whatever you want. I am sure that some people do just that, but they probably aren't Presbyterian, and I am sure that the liturgical rhythm of the Church is not first and foremost in their mind.

And they probably have had no trouble at all working on their sermon this week.

I'm not one to blindly follow tradition, but there are some things that you just don't do---and you can't just ignore the story of Jesus' Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.

But this leads to a bit of a quandary... In the short time I have been doing this whole preaching thing I have gone through the Palm Sunday story a few times. After a while you sort of wonder if your congregation has heard your Palm Sunday riff a few too many times.

That sermon needs to get preached, though. While we celebrate the cheers and palm waving …

I was reading an online news story today about a disgraced and dismissed seminary president from one of the largest Christian denominations in America.

A lifetime of boorish and chauvinistic behavior toward women finally caught up with him, and he'd finally done something that even the male-dominated establishment of his tribe couldn't ignore and he was asked to "retire."

And then I made the mistake of reading the reader's comments below the article.

Along with the scores straight up messages of support for this leader, there were also more than a few accusations that the whole thing was a web of conspiracies against him because of his commitment to the "truth."

I had to wonder how people who aren't Christians read those kinds of responses, and the wondering made me feel kind of weary.

I'm tired of apologizing for a church I don't belong to.

I bet there are a lot of Jesus-followers out there who are feeling the same way.

This week I am launching a new sermon series, "Family Values: Rediscovering What's Really Important." The idea is pretty simple...

Our culture has become marked by anxiety. There is no way to escape the deluge of bad news that just seems to permeate the air around us. Some blame it on the recent 24-hour news cycle that was once a phenomenon, and is now just the status quo. Others blame it on the immediacy of information from cable TV, the internet, smart phones and social media.

There is the passage of Scripture from Psalm 85 where the psalmist extols the virtues of those who are walking in pilgrimage to the Holy City of Jerusalem with the blessings of God all around them. "They move from strength to strength," he writes. Strength to strength... that sounds beautiful doesn't it?

Unfortunately, I think that most of the people in our culture move from fear to fear. We move from being anxious about terrorism to being anxious about war. We were fearful…

Leon Bloder is a preacher, a poet, a would-be writer, a husband, a
father, a son, a dreamer, a sinner, a former fundamentalist, a pastor, a
fellow-traveller and a failed artist. He is talentless, but
well-connected. He stumbles after Jesus, but hopes beyond hope that he
is stumbling in the right direction